I'm trying to make shower steamers. I had some really awesome ones a while ago but they were $4.00 a piece! o.O I thought to myself "I can make these!" So I looked up a few recipes for them and went to work. I've made them but.... when I was finished and I popped them out of the mold onto a cookie sheet to dry... they started expanding. (yay chemistry!) Its almost like I have one giant sheet of shower steamer.

Has anyone else done this? Does anyone have any suggestions?

To give you a bit more info.... the recipe I found said to use 1 cup baking soda, 1/2 cup citric acid, 1/4 cup epsom salts, 1/4 cup cornstarch, 1/4 witch hazel, 1/6 cup of honey and 2 table spoons of EO. Mix the dry ingredients, add EOs. Mix honey and witch hazel separately and put into a spray bottle. Spray mixture onto the dry stuffs and use your hand to mix just until it starts to clump. Then put the mixture into candy molds and pop out onto a cookie sheet to dry overnight.

Yeah that's the same thing you are doing to make bath salts fizz--mixing baking soda and citric acid and then adding liquid. Leave out the witch hazel and see how it does. You might need to add some oil if it's too dry without the witch hazel though, that shouldn't make it fizz or expand (I think). That might make the tub/shower slippery though so be careful. I have no patience for bath bombs that require witch hazel, that's why the recipe I use doesn't contain it!

I'm not sure why a lot of that stuff is even in the recipe, let me think about it and get back to you, I bet we can formulate something better

oh hmmmm. Maybe I'm thinking it is something else. I was thinking of something that is full of essential oils to get the shower all steamy and fragrant? Like lavender or a bit of eucalyptus or something?

ETA: Ok, I looked them up and now understand why it had the cornstarch, etc that was confusing me before. I don't really see any reason why you can't use a bath bomb recipe for it (like the one I was talking about). My other suggestion would be to leave the citric acid out, because you don't really need it to fizz like in the bathtub (of course bath bombs don't really need to fizz either, but it's fun!), but in my various experiments I have found that the more citric acid, the harder the final tablet, so I think if you want something hard that will hold together and not get crumbly it's good to keep it in there.

This is the bath bomb recipe I like. I don't think the honey in the recipe you found is necessary since it's for the shower, in the bathtub it might make a bit more sense because it would provide a moisturizing element, but maybe it's in there just as a liquid that doesn't cause everything to fizz and may be better (because of the slippery tub idea) than oil like I was talking about...

I like that recipe! I shall have to give it a try this coming weekend! One quick question though... in the recipe, it said to use Fragrance oil.... can you still use EO and have it work or does it have to be FO?